Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Can Superman really do it?

Saw "Superman Returns" on Sunday and it sure sucked big-time. Can't believe its the same director who gave us "The Usual Suspects", "X-Men" and "X-2". The movie is too cheesy for words and fails to connect with fans and non-fans alike. It especially falls flat in its attempt to explore the underlying human-ness of Superman, who is supposed to be an alien in the first place. Go figure !!

Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor hardly brings any menace to his role, strangely sounding more like Dr. Evil from Austin Powers, than the tech-savvy criminal super-genius we all are aware of.

**** Spoiler Alert ****

The greatest suspense in the movie is that Lois Lane has Supe's kid. Ho-hum etc. etc.

Here's a hilarious take on the physical impossibility of such a situation by the great Larry Niven, the author of the Hugo / Nebula winner Ringworld series (which IMHO employed pretty poor physics themselves).

And these are some excerpts to whet your appetite ...

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Assume a mating between Superman and a human woman designated LL for convenience.

Either Superman has gone completely schizo and believes himself to be Clark Kent; or he knows what he's doing, but no longer gives a damn. Thirty-one years is a long time. For Superman it has been even longer. He has X-ray vision; he knows just what he's missing. (One should not think of Superman as a Peeping Tom. A biological ability must be used. As a child Superman may never have known that things had surfaces, until he learned to suppress his X-ray vision. If millions of people tend shamelessly to wear clothing with no lead in the weave, that is hardly Superman's fault.)

The problem is this. Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual intercourse show that orgasm resembles "a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack." One loses control over one's muscles.

Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he do to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit?__________________________________Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to achieve greater and greater penetration. Remember also that we are dealing with kryptonian muscles.

Superman would literally crush LL's body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.

__________________________________Lastly, he'd blow off the top of her head.

Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume otherwise for a kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El's semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet. (One can imagine that the Kent home in Smallville was riddled with holes during Superboy's puberty. And why did Lana Lang never notice that?)

In view of the foregoing, normal sex is impossible between LL and Superman.

A ripened but unfertilized egg leaves LL's ovary, begins its voyage down her Fallopian tube.

Some time later, tens of millions of sperm, released from a test tube, begin their own voyage up LL's Fallopian tube.

The magic moment approaches...

Can human breed with kryptonian? Do we even use the same genetic code? On the face of it, LL could more easily breed with an ear of corn than with Kal-El. But coincidence does happen. If the genes match...

One sperm arrives before the others. It penetrates the egg, forms a lump on it's surface, the cell wall now thickens to prevent other sperm From entering. Within the now-fertilized egg, changes take place...

And ten million kryptonian sperm arrive slightly late.

Were they human sperm, they would be out of luck. But these tiny blind things are more powerful than a locomotive. A thickened cell wall won't stop them. They will *all* enter the egg, obliterating it entirely in an orgy of microscopic gang rape. So much for artificial insemination.

But LL's problems are just beginning .....

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And so I guess, would Bryan Singer's unless he redeems himself with a great sequel, as all fansites continue to scream.